Mirror, Mirror On The Wall, Which Is The Best Label Of Them All? A Cross-Country Study On Multi-Dimensional Multi-Level Sustainability Labels For Groceries

While multiple sustainability labels exist in the food context to nudge consumers to consume more sustainably, the majority inherits two crucial limitations. First, such labels need to encompass multiple levels, since groceries cannot simply be sorted into sustainable or not. Second, such labels should outline multiple dimensions (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions, water footprint, land use, animal welfare) to take into account the multi-facet nature of sustainability. Therefore, this article follows recent calls for literature and compares 14 different multi-dimensional multi-level sustainability labels (MDMLSLs) for groceries derived from literature and industry. After systematically analyzing the most important dimensions used in literature and industry labels, a best-worst scaling experiment with two representative samples of n=455 Swedish and n=459 Polish is conducted. The findings reveal that consumers in both countries show high preferences for MDMLSLs with additional scores for the dimensions and a traffic-light color scheme. However, cross-country as well as within-sample differences (based on Environmental Concerns, Eco-Label Involvement, Green Consumption Values) exist. Accordingly, in Sweden, three out of the five most preferred sustainability labels display scores for each dimension as well as an aggregated score, whereas in Poland aggregated labels are also among the highly valued ones.